Editor’s Comment: If anyone knows first hand how rigged elections are, it is Ron Paul. He chose to grin and bear it (but probably shouldn’t have) as the establishment covered up his victories in the 2008 and 2012 GOP primaries, and downplayed the huge crowds that showed up to support him everywhere.

The simple fact is that there is no one on the ballot who can simply get elected in and fix the mess, even with the best intentions. There really is no hope of change at all within the system, despite reassurances that we should put our efforts and hope in that cruel illusion of control over the affairs of American politics. The fact of the matter is that the deeply entrenched government – the “deep state” – has taken control of the levers of powers, and for better or worse, are steering the future.

Recognizing the worst in it, the American people have revolted and demanded “change” to a variety of problems in government… but if they get it at all, it won’t be at the ballot box, no matter how dramatically candidates are matched up and determined to fight for the White House.

Ron Paul: Vote All You Want, the Secret Government Won’t Change

by Carey Wedler

Former congressman Ron Paul is outspoken. When he retired from Congress, he called lawmakers psychopathic authoritarians to their faces. He’s also called Donald Trump an authoritarian and asserted Hillary Clinton could have run as a Republican. And just last week, Paul took aim at the foundational structure of American ‘democracy.’

In a recent episode of his web show, the Liberty Report, Ron Paul discussed the Department of Homeland Security’s decision last month to take a more active role in U.S. elections. Secretary Jeh Johnson said he was “considering whether elections should be classified as ‘critical infrastructure,’ affording them the same kinds of enhanced protections that the banking system and the electrical grid receive,”POLITICOreported.

The potential move came on the heels of the notorious DNC leak in July, which exposed intentions within the Democratic Party to manipulate the primary raceagainst Senator Bernie Sanders. Politicians and the media quickly blamed the hack on Russia, failing to cite conclusive proof of their allegations yet spawning the narrative that the Kremlin and other foreign threats could compromise U.S. elections.

On his show, Paul took issue with the notion that the Department of Homeland Security, an agency riddled with incompetence and failed objectives — case in point,the TSA — is capable of securing U.S. elections.

Speaking on DHS’s decision to become more involved in the process following the DNC hack, Ron Paul offered a scathing indictment of the federal organization, arguing it will capitalize on troubling events to seize power:

“They may have false flags and they may do a lot of things, but no matter how an emergency comes up, they’re going to make use of it. And the use of it isn’t to say ‘Hey, how are we going to protect the American people?’ Are they worrying, when they talk about doing something about rigged elections, [that] the votes are counted? No, they’re making sure that the votes aren’t counted and they’re irrelevant and the government has all this power.”

“The elections don’t matter. This is a ritual that we go through,” Paul observed last week. Instead, he referenced a seemingly omnipotent power much more influential than the ‘will of the people.’

“My belief is that the control is the Deep State, and people have to realize that,” he said.

Michael Lofgren, a former Republican congressional aide, has written extensively on the Deep State and describes it as “a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.”

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